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Happiness: the ultimate inner shift

There is a great number of people who – each morning – wake up, get up, go through the early morning motions on auto-pilot, dragging their feet to work, filling up on caffeine and polluting their systems throughout the day with unhealthy foods, but even more so with negative emotions. Each day, however, could be a perfect expression of our Buddha-nature. Each moment could be a divine opportunity for us to consciously choose who we want to be. To aid this process of re-cognition – knowing again – we can choose to adopt the five attitudes of Godliness: joy, love, acceptance, blessing, and gratefulness.

Joy is our truest essence; our soul is made up of joyful particles that keep us connected to God. Feeling God’s joy (and not the ego-centered version which I like to differentiate as euphoria), enables us to see through maya’s illusions as well as our man-made illusions. From this place of joyfulness we experience each moment as what is, recognizing its fitting perfection in the grand scheme of our life.

When we re-cognize that everything is perfect just as it is, it becomes easy to simply love it all.

However, it is not of human love we should fill ourselves, but of Divine love. God’s love, unlike ours, is unconditional free of labels and judgments. It rests upon the certainty that everything and everyone is perfect just as is. Even if we fail to understand such perfection with our minds, we must defer to our hearts and our bodies to remind us of this universal law. Nothing happens for our detriment. No one crosses our path to harm us. Everything occurs to exalt us, should we not then love it all?

Once we love every event and every person as a real and powerful opportunity to express who we really are, it becomes second nature to accept everything just as it is. Acceptance has the muscle to lead us towards a world of oneness and unity. Separations and differences become irrelevant; labels and judgments abandon our minds; while, unique opportunities and special messages start appearing everywhere.

As we seize the opportunities and decipher the messages, our Divine Self grows stronger and feels so abundant with joy and love that accepting is no longer sufficient, we learn to bless every event and every person for the role they play in our own illusion. By now, comfortable with the concept of oneness, we are conscious of the universal law of cause and effect. Each blessing given will be a blessing received. Why would we want to receive anything else? Even the oddest of circumstance is hence blessed and released. The message for us will come forth eventually.

While we may not see or re-cognize the messages, we trust they are there, we offer blessings for the perfect expression of what we have consciously or unconsciously chosen. Ultimately, we grow awake to the fact that the messages are a gift from our own soul to our conscious selves and – as our own sense of creation crystallizes – we become grateful for each one of them. Each one holds a precious opportunity for our growth, change, and magnificence.

How can these five attitudes of godliness realistically help us in our daily affairs? How to apply them to a difficult relationship?

The first step is to go back to the basics, or the Holy Trinity of Holistic Living, awareness, honesty and responsibility. Become aware of what is: how you are feeling, the surrounding noises, smells, what is happening in your body. Truly connect to the here and now of a particular situation. This will enable your true feelings to come forth as well as your own responsibility in creating this situation for a purpose. This initial work will already have released some of the limiting energy around the difficult relationship.

The second step is to go within (through silence and presence) and connect to the magic of your own Buddha-nature. Therein lies the joy, the blissful happiness that will move you away from anger and fear, towards love.

The third step is to allow this love to inundate every cell and pore of your body. If it helps, visualize it as a warm light that gently soaks you in its loving energy. Make sure to connect the sensation and visualization to your body. The memory in every cell will help you retrieve it whenever you need it.

The final step is to honor the responsibility to act, speak from this place of light and love. Trust your truth and have faith in your Buddha-nature to deliver the message in the best way possible. A wise woman told me that we - while we cannot escape inflicting pain on others when we speak from a place of truth - we must honor our truth.

Note that nothing may change on the outside for days or months to come. The main change will be inside you, empowering you to live your life through joy rather than from anger or frustration or sadness. The first and most important shift is within you, learn to honor yourself and the world will do the same.